


haunted hearts

by twistedsky



Series: ramen24 [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-02-19 23:46:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2407340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedsky/pseuds/twistedsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-First Avenger, pre-Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers moves into an apartment in his new present, and he's being quasi-haunted by the (possible) ghost of Bucky Barnes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	haunted hearts

**Author's Note:**

> I've never really written Steve/Bucky as a main pairing before, even though I ship them incredibly hard, so this was an interesting experience. It's kind of terrible, and it's very thought-process heavy, but that's true of everything I write.
> 
> I don't own anything here, and all mistakes are my own. This kind of fulfills 'living with a ghost' AU for a fic project I'm doing called Ramen24.

Steve doesn’t think overly much about destiny— _duty_ , now that’s something he understands. Responsibility, honor, necessity. Those are words that he understands, concepts that are ingrained in his very being.

Protect those who cannot protect themselves, stand up to those who would take advantage of the vulnerable and disenfranchised.

Steve Rogers did not become a soldier to fight, no. Steve Rogers became a soldier to  _protect._

Duty is everything now, and it’s what keeps him going when his heart shatters into a million little pieces when he watches Bucky fall to his death.

There are bright spots in his life, of course. There’s the mission, there’s hope, there’s Peggy, there’s Howard, but there’s loss too.

There’s a part of him(just a part), that welcomes icy waters, that welcomes  _death._

He doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter anyway, and his only regret is that he’ll never get his dance with Peggy.

Everything else is settled.

~~

Life is a gift, but it can be unpredictable and cruel beyond even your wildest dreams.

There is something, after all, to be said for awakening decades in the future, and realizing that almost everyone you knew and loved is dead. The few exceptions will cease to be exceptions in short order, though that isn’t something he likes to consciously think about.

~~

He lives in some strange SHIELD housing at first, though it doesn’t take long for the world to implode.

His anachronistic existence is not doing him any favors. He lacks purpose, lacks a place to fit in, and he’s unhappy.

He can see with such clarity where the world he’d loved had improved, where it had stagnated, and where it seems to be worse off than before.

Loki gives him purpose, and the battle in New York changes everything. The  _Avengers_  change everything.

It’s so fleeting and temporary, and yet he feels different.

He belongs here now, and sitting around feeling lost isn’t getting him any closer to finding a new way to live.

It’s easy to slip fully into SHIELD at that point. It utilizes his skills perfectly, and it gives him purpose.

And sometimes he thinks he can see Peggy’s hand in SHIELD and it brings him slight comfort.

~~

He moves into an apartment after the ‘Battle of New York’ as the media calls it.

A few days in, he starts to hear things.

Training readies him for battle, but there’s nothing to do battle with, and it makes him uncomfortable.

There are noises, movements,  _feelings_  that he can’t quite explain.

Steve feels like he’s being haunted(though that might be Natasha’s fault for recommending obscure horror films and insisting that they were ‘funny’ and ‘light-hearted’).

He’s not sure he trusts Natasha’s recommendations anymore, though there’s a part of him that trusts her in battle. He trusts her to do her job, to take care of herself. He’s not sure if he’d trust her if his life were on the line, but he’s not really sure he’d trust anyone if it came to that.

The point is, he thinks, that he needs to find a diversion to distract him from the odd feeling that he’s not alone.

Maybe he’s been on high alert for too long.

Maybe he needs a vacation, or maybe he needs more work, or maybe—Steve throws a kitchen knife at the ghost of his past that’s standing in his kitchen nonchalantly sitting on his countertop.

Bucky snorts when the knife goes right through his head and gets stuck in a cabinet door.

The smirk on his face rips at Steve’s heart, and it’s an aching, bleeding wound as it is.

“Who are you?” he asks, because he isn’t Bucky no matter how much he looks like him, sounds like him, or pretends to be him.

Bucky’s smile falters, and he sighs. “You already know the answer to that question.”

~~

The future requires such a suspension of disbelief sometimes that he’s not sure what to do with himself.

At some point he expects his brain to start dribbling out of his ears, because he’s not sure he understands anything anymore.

This  _being_  is Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes, his best friend, is not alive, but he’s  _here_.

Steve isn’t sure what to call him, but Bucky has no qualms about calling himself a ghost, a figment of Steve’s imagination, a sign that Steve needs a medical check-up(Bucky is an asshole, but this much has always been true).

Clearly, they have to do some research.

In-between missions across the world, Steve watches movies(and Bucky offers a running commentary about how ridiculous they all are).

The terrifying thing is that it feels right and natural to have Bucky around.

It would be better, Steve thinks, if Bucky were actually there.

They finish a very unscientific romantic comedy about a woman in a coma who falls in love with the man who rents her apartment, and it makes Steve oddly uncomfortable(and not just because of the male lead’s odd resemblance to Bruce Banner, which Steve thinks he probably won’t be able to stop himself from mentioning the next time that the sees the man).

Steve thinks of himself as a good person, but he’s not  _that_  good of a person.

~~

“Punk,” Bucky calls him, and Steve’s chest feels tight.

He smiles, and responds in kind, ignoring the feeling.

There’s always been _something_ that Steve’s never let himself think about, something about the way he feels that he’s never put words to.

He doesn’t put words to it now either.

Bucky is a _ghost._ Steve still isn’t sure how to handle that anyway.

When your best friend is haunting you, there’s not much else you can do. You avoid, you pretend, you appreciate the fact that it’s happening at all, because it really shouldn’t be.

Aliens, he understands.

Ghosts seem strange and far-fetched, but the only other option is hallucination, and either way, it’s not like he actually wants it to stop.

~~

After a particularly exhausting and difficult assignment, Steve comes back home, and Bucky’s waiting for him(as he always is). There’s something about that that’s incredibly comforting—it makes Steve feel _safe_ in the way that Bucky has managed as long as Steve has known him.

Steve is pretty sure that without Bucky, the apartment wouldn’t much feel like home at all, and that makes him wonder if he’ll ever get used to this century.

He spends too much time at home with his dead best friend, when he should be out  _doing_  things.

Music, film, television, and books occupy some of this time, with him trying to get used to the world as it is, while at the same time trying to fill up his knowledge of the things he’s missed.

He contemplates an art class at a local community college, just out of curiosity, but instead he buys a few more books online, and tries not to smile when Bucky teases him for being a bookworm. He starts experimenting with jogging routes, and that helps him get around a bit more, and it makes him feel better.

~~

“You’re taking up too much of the bed,” Steve points out, and he’s right. For a ghostly being that isn’t actually taking up any space, Bucky has more than half of the bed.

“Just move, it’s not like you can bump into me.”

“No, I’ll just go through you,” and that just kind of creeps Steve out.

Bucky laughs, and Steve’s chest does that weird clenching thing it often does these days. Steve feels warm, almost feverish, and he tries to think about something else.

Bucky waves his hand through Steve’s face, and Steve fights the urge to close his eyes.

He already knows that no matter how hard he tries, he won’t feel anything at all. Not even a chill, or some vague discomfort.

Nothing at all.

Steve doesn’t like to think about that much, because so much of their friendship had feel physical-more physical than he’d even realized.

It’s the small things he misses, like partial hugs and Bucky’s arm around his shoulder, or bumping into him playfully.

Those things don’t seem small now, especially when one of them messes up and Bucky goes right through Steve, and obviously neither of them can feel anything at all.

Bucky moves over a few inches, and Steve breathes a little easier.

He can also acknowledge the lie—he feels _something_ , even if it isn’t quite physical, it’s just—it’s strange, he thinks, and he can’t quite put his finger on it.

~~

Steve likes Natasha, generally. They fight well together, at least that much is true. The only real problem is that she’s unpredictable.

It’s not just her though, it’s  _SHIELD_. There are moments when he doesn’t trust it, and there are moments when Nick Fury or Natasha, or Rumlow, or someone else he’s working with will do something, and he knows that he’s supposed to just accept it without question.

He doesn’t.

He’s not very good at ignoring things that make him uncomfortable, at least not when the stakes are this high, not when there’s risk of people getting hurt, or of him being complicit in something that isn’t right.

Steve believes in doing the right thing, and he genuinely wants to believe that these people are good(sometimes, he thinks, you have to do bad things for the greater good, or at least that’s what people keep saying).

He’s not sure he believes it.

Sometimes he’s not sure that he believes in anything outside of what he knows to be true, and that is a collection of things that is constantly shrinking, constantly in doubt.

Sometimes, when this happens, he visits Peggy.

The first time he visits her, she cries. He waits until he gets home, and then he cries in the shower, pretending it’s just the water falling on him. He hadn’t wanted to upset Peggy by crying in front of her, and he feels the same way about Bucky, whether it’s really him or not(there’s a part of him that  _feels_  that it’s him, but there’s also a part of him that thinks it just might be his mind playing tricks on him, because he can’t have lost everyone like this).

The second time, she doesn’t recognize him.

He’d been warned by the doctors, but it still catches him by surprise. This time, he cries in front of her, and she remembers.

Usually, she doesn’t forget him, she just forgets what they’ve talked about, or that they’ve talked at all.

He wonders, sometimes, what his life might have been like if he’d had the opportunity to make it back to her.

It’s a dangerous thought, and he doesn’t like to mentally go down that road too often.

Steve Rogers is a man out of time, and he feels it every moment of every day.

He never forgets completely, though he comes closest in moments with Bucky, who doesn’t show his damage.

Steve feels it though, constantly.

~~

His daily runs keep him centered.

He searches around for a nice route, and one day he comes across another running man, and he feels an odd, immediate sense of kinship.

“On your left,” he says one day, and the man laughs and Steve passes him.

They never speak. For now, Steve is content with that. He’s content to have a person in his life that doesn’t require anything of him.

There’s peace, in that, and Steve is a man desperately in need of peace.

~~

Natasha tries to set him up.

It’s a constant problem. He wants to be able to tell her that he’s not as lonely as she thinks he is, that when he’s at home, he’s not home  _alone_ , but while she’s nice enough, and her sense of humor meshes well with his, and they fight well together, it’s certainly not enough to divulge a secret this massive to her.

He hasn’t told Peggy either.

He’d tried, once, but she’d thought he meant figuratively seeing ghosts from his past.

He might be struggling with some sort of trauma, but he’s not sure that that’s what this is.

~~

He tells Bucky about Natasha, and Bucky says he’d like to meet her, Steve really considers it.

He wonders if he’s the only person who sees him, if Bucky really is all in his head.

There’s an ache building in his heart at every thought of that, and he isn’t sure how to lessen it. He’s not sure there’s a way that wouldn’t involve more pain.

He’s not capable of dealing with that. Not yet, anyway.

He looks at Bucky’s face while he’s focused on some terrible movie from the 80s(how this is on the list, he’s not sure, and he’s planning on erasing the other recommendations that Stark had made from the list, because he’s pretty sure they’re all going to be this bad).

Later, when Steve does mention it to Stark, the other man laughs and gets Banner to tell Steve that it’s actually considered an  _important_  movie, and Steve has nothing to say to that.

But for now, Steve looks at Bucky, and has the urge to draw him.

Bucky acquiesces, and even though Steve could draw him from memory(and he’s certainly drawn him many times before), they sit down, and Steve begins to feel nervous.

It was a bad idea, he thinks.

He’s not sure why, but it definitely is.

~~

Bucky is attractive. Steve has always known this. Women were always interested in him(and sometimes men, something Steve had noticed on occasion back when he wasn’t supposed to), and Steve imagines that if he were alive in the world today, things wouldn’t be any different. He’s always been charming too, and Steve is now the sole recipient of that charm.

Steve knows enough about the world today to know that the things that people used to do behind closed doors are now out in the open(though they aren’t accepted by everyone everywhere).

This thought process is entirely centered on a feeling he’s always had.

Before, when they were younger, when they’d lived in a different time, when Steve had been fighting so hard to overcome things that he hadn’t had time to let himself think about it overly too much, he’d had an inkling, maybe, that he’d felt something for Bucky that wasn’t entirely . .  . friendly.

Now, it may be a different time, but all that means is that Bucky is dead, and Steve can’t let himself go down that path, because he carries too much of that regret and pain with him as it is.

~~

“I love you,” Bucky says one day, and that’s not too unnatural, because they’re best friends, brothers(Steve may think that word a bit bitterly, but there’s no one around to know that but him).

Steve’s sure this is just that—just friendship and brotherhood, and the fact that Steve is all he has.

There’s no real context for his words, because Bucky had simply come into the room and sighed.

Steve looks up from his meal to meet Bucky’s eyes, and he breathes in sharply, because that is not the face of friendship, or brotherhood.

“I’m  _in_  love with you,” Bucky clarifies, and Steve’s not sure what to say to that, because it feels natural, but also terrifying, and—his phone rings, and Steve reaches for it, and when he looks back to where Bucky was standing, Bucky’s nowhere to be found.

Steve answers the phone, and ignores the questions buzzing around in his mind.

Are you sure? Since when?

Why are you telling me this?

Most importantly—if you’re a figment of my imagination, does that mean I’m in love with you?

The questions, and their answers, can wait until later.

~~

Steve’s ghostly roommate is gone.

It’s only been a few days, but Steve has this sinking feeling that it’s going to be a lot longer than that.

He tries to distract himself—he finally talks to his odd little jogging friend, he visits Peggy, and he forces himself back into the world suddenly, not realizing that everything in his life is about to change yet again.

~~

A few days later, SHIELD falls, Bucky’s nowhere to be found, and then—then there’s Bucky, James Buchanan Barnes,  _alive_.

He’s not sure what’s happening, but it’s overwhelming, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing, except trying to save the world with the help of Natasha, and then Sam, and everything is falling apart.

~~

Steve cannot kill Bucky.

Not like this, not  _ever_.

Steve believes in Bucky, he always has. He believes in their friendship, in their _brotherhood_ , in the connection they’ve had since the day they met.

This, this may not be Bucky on the surface, but there has to be a part of him that is still  _Bucky._

The very fact that Steve survives shows that there is a part of him underneath, there is something in him that is still Bucky, because otherwise he would have killed Steve.

Steve heals, Natasha gives him a file, Sam swears to stand by his side, and Steve finds new purpose.

~~

Sam goes with him when he goes back to his apartment.

Steve hasn’t told him about the hallucinations, because that must be what they were, because although the other man is kind, and good, Steve just . . . he can’t.

His Bucky hallucination is nowhere to be found, and Steve thinks that might be a good thing. It proves something. It proves that Steve has accepted the truth, that there is a Bucky who is  _alive._

There is a Bucky very unlike the ghostly hallucinations that he’s been having.

There is a Bucky who is  _out there somewhere, and Steve is going to find him_ _._

But first, Steve needs to move out.

Hydra still exists, and Steve isn’t foolish enough to think that he isn’t on a list of people who need to be taken out.

There is a part of him that doesn’t want to leave. It isn’t the memories of Bucky, no, because that makes him  _want_  to leave.

There’s a swirl of complicated emotions he hasn’t had the time to work through, and although he knows exactly what conclusion he’ll come to, he just isn’t  _there_  yet.

In the end, he doesn’t want to leave because he knows that Bucky knows how to find him here, because of the day he’d come to kill Nick Fury.

Steve knows that Bucky must have the skills to find him wherever he goes(he’s read the file, after all), but he has an irrational fear to the contrary, and it’s not so easy to defeat.

~~                                                                                                                   

In a different version of events, where he doesn’t go down with the plane, and he doesn’t wake up in the future, he never sees Bucky Barnes again.

In a different version of events, where Bucky doesn’t fall to what he’d thought had been his death, and Steve still goes down with the plane, Steve never sees Bucky Barnes again.

Both of them have their perks, but in the end, they both have one intrinsic, deal-breaking flaw: Steve would never have seen Bucky again.

Maybe, maybe, there’s another version of events, where he doesn’t go down with the plane, and Bucky doesn’t fall, and everybody  _lives._

Maybe there’s a version of events where he never has to live to see the future, and he never meets the other Avengers, or Sam, or Nick Fury, and his life is  _different._

Maybe he helps to found SHIELD, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he and Peggy fall in love and get married, or maybe she marries someone else. Maybe he watches Bucky marry some girl, or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe, even, there’s a version of events where he never gets the supersoldier serum, and Bucky dies anyway(or maybe he doesn’t, and he’s still the winter soldier, and Steve never sees him again anyway).

Maybe, Steve thinks, there’s a world where he realizes that there’s always been  _something_  there between him and Bucky, something he’s never really put a name to until recently, when it had hit him right in the face.

Steve tries not to think about any of this, but late at night when he’s in bed trying to get to sleep after yet another unsuccessful attempt to find Bucky, this is  _all_  he can think about it.

~~

Steve doesn’t give up, but at some point, he loses any chance of finding Bucky, and until he finds a new lead, he has to go home.

Home, now, is a new apartment that, of course, doesn’t even have his real name on it.

He’s started to get calls from Tony Stark about some idea he has, about some modifications he’s made to Stark Tower that should be of some interest to Steve.

Steve doubts it, but he’ll return the calls eventually. Probably. There’s something oddly pleasing about making the other man wait, especially since he’s so impatient and used to getting his way.

Steve lets himself into his new apartment, contemplating the fact that Coulson, another apparently not dead person he’s mourned, is alive and wants him to help rebuild SHIELD.

There’s a lot of work to be done, Steve knows, and no one will stop telling him that.

He’s ready to get back to work, he decides, since there’s no sense in indecision and sitting around waiting for Bucky to turn up on his front door step.

When he opens the door and sees Bucky sitting on his couch, he fleetingly thinks that, well, of course Bucky wouldn’t show up on his front door step—clearly, he’d just let himself in.

Bucky’s wearing shaggy, oversized clothing, and it looks like he’d tried to give himself a haircut, and there’s a conflicted, pained look on his face that breaks Steve’s heart.

Steve feels a sharp twist in his chest, and something inside of him sparks with one intense, all-consuming thought: Steve never wants to lose Bucky again.

The fear and urgency that threaten to overwhelm him are warring with relief that Bucky’s  _okay_. He’s here, he hasn’t disappeared, never to be seen from again, he’s  _here._

~~

It’s barely Bucky, but barely is enough, he tells himself. Barely is better than nothing, even if he barely speaks, and his face is blank(except when whispers of pain cross it), and it pulls at something deep inside of Steve, something he can’t even think about now.

Now, he has to make sure that Bucky is okay.

Sometimes he tells stories, and sometimes he tries to let Bucky just have some time to think, and most of the time he feels like he’s failing, like he’s not helping at all, but what else can he do?

Bucky won’t speak to anyone but him, and he  _barely_  speaks to Steve at that.

Sometimes he’ll acknowledge Natasha, and he’ll occasionally look at Sam when he’s talking, but for the first few months, Bucky is barely present at all.

Steve reminds himself that it’s better than nothing, and that it’ll get better.

The first time that Steve has to leave Bucky, he’s afraid that Bucky won’t be there when he comes back.

He asks Sam to stay, to watch over him, and Sam obliges.

Steve is slightly frantic when he gets back, all nerves and anxiousness.

He takes one look at Bucky, who is staring at the television, eating the dinner that Sam must have made for him—Sam is a great cook, which probably helps.

Sam isn’t always so sure about Bucky, especially since he’d tried to kill all of them, but he’s compassionate and kind, and Steve is incredibly grateful to have met him.

Without Natasha and Sam, Steve isn’t entirely sure what he’d do.

He watches Bucky actually smile when Sam makes a joke, and he feels hopeful.

~~

There are bad days—often more bad days than good ones, especially in the beginning.

It gets easier with time though, and Bucky really starts to open up.

~~

Steve doesn’t let himself think about hallucinations, or ghosts of his past.

All he has is the here and now—he has a few old friends, and some new ones, and all he can do is build a new life, and find a new path.

He’s not sure exactly what that path is, but he knows that while the past can inform the future, he needs to live for that future.

He’s spent a lot of time remembering, and regretting.

The more he watches Bucky, the more he regrets. This, in turn, makes him even more desperate to move on.

~~

Time passes.

Here is an unavoidable, undeniable truth: Steve is in love with Bucky.

Steve has felt attraction before. He’s felt longing, he’s felt want.

He could have been in love with Peggy once, but he’s never had the time before, he’s never had to completely reevaluate everything he knows on a constant basis until all he truly knows(beyond duty, honor, justice) is  _this_.

He wonders, briefly, if this is just because Bucky is practically all he has left, but then Bucky says something—something that Steve hadn’t mentioned about the past, that Bucky could have only remembered for himself—and he  _knows_.

He’s not sure what to do about it.

It’s hard to be in love with your best friend, but it’s even harder when you’re both so far removed from where you used to be, when you used to be,  _who_ you used to be.

Bucky fits inside of his heart like he always has, except now his feelings for Bucky pulse inside of him. It’s not just comfort or friendship; it’s an aching sense of rightness.

He’s off-balance with Bucky sometimes now, but it’s getting better with time—their relationship is off-kilter, but it’s self-correcting with time, with compassion, with care.

Steve doesn’t like to think about what could come of this.

When he thinks of the future, he thinks of what needs to be done, not of what he feels. He can’t let himself feel things too deeply, not now. There’s too much to be done, and he needs to make sure that Bucky is okay.

~~

There is a day, long after Bucky shows up in his apartment, when Steve begins to feel happy again.

There are bits and pieces of happiness, of course. Steve has friends—friends he’d call family, because he trusts them more than he’s even capable of explaining.

This is different though. Today, Steve Rogers has a perfect day.

He and Sam make breakfast together, and Natasha mercilessly flirts with Sam, pretending to do so only in jest (but there’s a sparkle in both of their eyes that Steve recognizes, and it makes him feel warm and _joyful_ ).

Bucky eats, something he’s not always prone to doing, and he makes light conversation, even smiling when Steve turns to tease him.

They finish breakfast(it’s more of a brunch, Natasha says, in an imitation of something Steve feels is familiar, but he can’t quite name it), and from there they spend a day in complete harmony.

They watch a movie, and then they go out for ice cream(a feat in itself, because they’re all still jittery about being out in public, Bucky most of all).

They take a nice, relaxing stroll back to Steve’s apartment, and it’s just _nice_.

When Natasha and Sam leave, Steve smiles at Bucky across from his countertop, and has an intense urge to kiss him. The urge doesn’t happen often, but it’s coming more and more frequently.

Bucky seems to read his mood, and tilts his head to the side. “What?” There’s something almost flirty about the way he does it, and while that’s so incredibly _Bucky_ , this feels like something different.

“What?” Steve is taken aback, and unsure.

Bucky smiles, slightly, almost teasing.

It makes his heart clench inside his chest, halfway joyful, halfway terrified.

There’s joy in these moments of hope, of possibility.

Bucky is healing, and maybe he is too.

Bucky’s slight smile fades, and Steve lets out the breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding for the past few seconds.

“Sometimes,” Bucky says slowly, running his hand through his hair, which he’d only recently been okay with cutting, and looks surprised for a moment when he remembers that he had, like he always does.

Steve imagines he’d had such tics programmed out of him, so it’s interesting that he does so at all. Steve doesn’t like to think about things like that, but when he does, he can see that Bucky’s healing, and that helps.

It comforts him.

“Sometimes,” Bucky repeats, “You confuse me.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that.

Bucky reaches out his hand and places it over Steve’s. “I have trouble,” he says, “With what’s real and what’s not real.”

Steve nods, he knows this.

Bucky squeezes his hand. “I know I’m not exactly who I was before.”

“Bucky—“ Steve starts, then stops.

Bucky’s hand is burning on top of his. “I’m confused,” he admits. “I’m not sure what the future holds, but I—“

“Bucky—“ Steve says again.

“Thank you,” Bucky says. “For being my friend.”

“Till the end of the line,” Steve promises, as always.

Bucky smiles faintly again, and then clears his throat. “I know things—things I don’t want to know, or that I didn’t know before, and I can  _see_  things. I can feel them.”

Steve can feel quite a bit now too, though he’s not sure what to say about it.

“I know, Steve,” Bucky says.

“You know what?” Steve’s almost too afraid to ask.

Bucky shakes his head. “I know,” he says. “How you feel. About me, I mean.”

Steve is flustered, and he starts to pull his hand away, but Bucky clenches it, turning it over and holding it with both of his. “I can explain—“

“Maybe,” Bucky says, “One day, I can sit here and tell you that I feel the same way.”

Steve’s heart plummets.

“But I—“ Bucky’s voice is shaky, and Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand supportively.

“Not yet,” Bucky says, but it’s not disappointing, not really.

Steve understands what he means, he understands that this is more than he’s ever let himself hope for, that Bucky feels something, but he just can’t let himself, not now.

Steve understands that sentiment well.

“But I do,” Bucky says. “I feel—“

“It’s okay,” Steve says. “I know,” he smiles, slightly, repeating Bucky’s words back to him.

They sit there, for a while, and Steve is content to enjoy the moment.

Something bubbles up inside of him, and it feels glorious and big, and joyous.

~~

There is never an explanation for the Bucky he'd lived with for months. 

Steve wonders sometimes maybe it had been Bucky, maybe—the Bucky hidden away, trapped in the recesses of his own mind, buried under the stress of programming and lies. 

Maybe it had just been Steve's psyche needing to work through his feelings for Bucky.

Steve doesn't really have any answers, but he's content to live in the present, to let go of those worries. 

~~

One day comes.

With open minds and hearts, they let themselves love each other. And with that love comes hope, which Steve clutches onto gratefully.

It’s dangerous, but maybe, Steve thinks, it’s better than the alternatives.

 


End file.
